FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT CALGARY - PAGE 5

CALGARY, Alberta -- Offensive tackle Shar Pourdanesh sees today's game as a chance for the Stallions to validate themselves as one of the Canadian Football League's elite teams. Running back Mike Pringle wishes Baltimore could have played the game a day earlier, to end the most grueling road trip of the season a little sooner.A crowd approaching a sellout is expected at McMahon Stadium, where Baltimore takes on the Calgary Stampeders in a contest widely being billed as a preview of this year's Grey Cup.For Baltimore, a victory today would buck the odds.

CALGARY, Alberta -- Doug Flutie threw three touchdown passes to lead the Calgary Stampeders to their record 20th straight home victory, a 35-25 win over the Las Vegas Posse last night.The home winning streak ties the record set by the Montreal Alouettes from Nov. 8, 1953, to Nov. 3, 1956. Calgary began the current streak Sept. 20, 1992.Carlos Huerta's 51-yard field goal pulled Las Vegas to 28-23 in the third quarter, but Tony Stewart's 2-yard run with 2:31 left in the game gave the Stampeders a 35-23 bulge.

Two weeks into the regular season, the chairman of the Canadian Football League's expansion committee is calling Baltimore the "model expansion franchise."Larry Ryckman, owner and president of the Calgary Stampeders, said Baltimore owner Jim Speros has exceeded expectations by selling 25,000 season tickets this year."Baltimore has shown, and will show, you can get 25,000, 35,000, to games in the U.S.," said Ryckman, who arrived ahead of his team to help promote last night's home opener at Memorial Stadium.

LONDON -- Still smarting from his rejection by the British Olympic Association, Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards was in Canada yesterday to do something similar to what he had been banned from doing at the Winter Olympics in France."

By Raphael Sugarman and Raphael Sugarman,New York Daily News | June 11, 1995

Calling yourself "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth" is no trivial claim, especially at a time when scores of fancy theme parks are springing up everywhere.But how many of these amusement parks have real cowboys and Indians, bucking broncos and Brahma bulls, pig dashes and chuck-wagon races -- not to mention one of the largest parades in the world?For more than 80 years, the Calgary Exhibition & Stampede, held in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, has been labeled the greatest outdoor show on earth -- and for good reason.

-- Just as George Bush and Dan Quayle dislike Garry Trudeau, who tickles only their angry bones in "Doonesbury," so the Calgary Flames' Doug Gilmour thinks hockey cartoonist Dave Elston isn't funny.The center has reacted with pained fury to being lampooned. A Calgary Sun cartoon last week poked at him for his complaints that $750,000 a year, the sum awarded him by a NHL arbiter, wasn't enough.Elston caricatured Gilmour at an adopt-a-family table applying for funding as one of the holiday season's neediest families, evoking a Christmas promotion run by the paper.

LANDOVER -- On a few occasions during the last month or so, the Washington Capitals have charged out to two-, three- and four-goal leads, then slipped into a trance. Suddenly, they were fighting tooth and nail for the win, maybe even losing.So, last night, the Caps hit the Calgary Flames with everything but the exercise bike in the players' lounge in the first 30 minutes and were breezing atop a 4-0 cushion. And this time there was no letup.In fact, the way they were swarming all over the ice, it appeared the Flames were anxiously looking forward to getting on with their lives away from the rink.

It's only speculation, but don't bet against this daily double.The best guess is Brian Sutter will end up coaching the Calgary Flames not far from the family homestead in Viking, Alberta, and Dave King will be named coach in Toronto where Cliff Fletcher can tutor him to succeed him as the next Maple Leafs general manager in a few years.Flames general manager Doug Risebrough returns tomorrow from the World Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and has scheduled a meeting later this week with Sutter, whom St. Louis fired after losing this year to the Blackhawks in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

REGINA, Saskatchewan -- When they made history a year ago by advancing to the Grey Cup, becoming the first American team to do so -- in their inaugural season, no less -- the Baltimore Stallions experienced the wrath of nationalism in Canada.During their playoff march through Winnipeg, which Baltimore defeated to make it to the Grey Cup in Vancouver, the Stallions got a clear message from Canadian fans and media: How dare you even think of taking the Cup south of the border. Remember the snowball barrage Baltimore endured on its sideline in Winnipeg?

Calgary, Alberta It seems like sheer pandemonium, a scene out of an old silent, slapstick western movie. In the infield in front of the grandstand -- an oval enclosure of black dirt churned up by the hoofs of horses and cattle -- teams of horses hitched to small covered wagons and some 20 cowboys and their mounts are milling around without apparent rhyme or reason.Suddenly, at the sound of a loud, piercing horn, the horses and riders are galvanized into action. Riders mount their steeds, wagon drivers jump into their seats, and the wagons, four of them drawn by four-horse teams, cautiously maneuver around red-numbered, white-painted oil drums in a figure-eight configuration.